The Dare Collection: May 2018. Clare Connelly
slips the strap over his head, turns to face someone just off stage and nods, then strums the guitar. Once. Loudly.
The crowd erupts.
‘How you doing, New York?’ he calls, and the crowd’s screaming is louder. ‘We’re gonna have some fun tonight.’
He launches into a song—one of his earlier hits. I am mesmerised. I watch the whole thing twice, my heart throbbing, my body craving, and then my eyes lift to the tulips.
Tonight can’t come soon enough.
* * *
‘I’m impressed your attention span’s lasted this long. She must be really in good in bed.’
I stare at the screen in frustration.
‘Is there a reason you’re Face Timing me, Sienna? Other than to show more than a natural interest in my sex life?’
She swishes her hair over one shoulder—a gesture that used to drive me crazy. I can imagine the way it will smell, like flowers and vanilla. You know that weird way smells have of binding themselves to your core memories and triggering them whenever prompted?
‘We were together a lifetime, Ash. Am I not allowed to care about who you’re with now?’
I laugh. An instant dismissal. ‘Not really.’
I unbutton my shirt, my eyes on hers mockingly. There is a part of me that knows how fucked up this is—that acknowledges I’m playing with fire and that someone’s going to get badly burned.
But it won’t be me. And I won’t let it be Ally.
‘So?’ Sienna slowly runs her eyes down my body, her admiration something she doesn’t bother to hide. ‘Is it serious?’
‘No.’ I grin, but something like pain clutches inside me. ‘It’s fun. A whole lotta fun.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
I lean closer, so that my face is all she can see. ‘It means that Ally and I are having a whole lotta fun. And that’s it.’
Tears sparkle in Sienna’s eyes and my reaction is instantaneous. Guilt.
What am I doing? I’m not this guy. I’m not going to flaunt it over my ex that I’m fucking someone beautiful and hot and sexy and distracting. What Sienna did is beyond forgiving, but that doesn’t give me a free pass to be an A-grade dick.
Besides, whatever satisfaction I thought I’d get from rubbing my sex-life in Sienna’s face is non-existent. What I’m doing is about Ally and me and the way she makes me feel. Sienna is incidental.
‘You’re engaged,’ I say slowly. ‘None of this matters.’
‘I just...’ She wipes away the tears and her lower lip pouts. ‘I miss you.’
Fuck.
The words hit me square in the chest—like little missiles that pull me apart from the inside out.
‘You miss me?’ I repeat, pulling away from my phone and reaching for a fresh shirt.
It is everything I needed to hear a month ago, and yet now those three little words fill me with a chasm of unease. I pull the shirt over my head and come back to the camera. Then I change my mind and pour a measure of Scotch. It’s two in the afternoon, but I don’t give a shit. In that moment I need something to straighten my head—or to un-straighten it. I need something to calm me down.
‘You don’t get to call me out of nowhere and say you miss me.’
‘Don’t be angry with me.’
‘Angry with you?’ Incredulity makes my voice sound amused when I’m anything but. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘I was under so much pressure at the end, you know. The tour and the album... I think I might have...’ She shakes her head and leans closer.
I don’t know if she deliberately pans the camera down but I can see she’s only wearing a bra and lace panties. I look away, the feeling guilt and betrayal of Ally making my breath short.
‘I took it out on you. I was such a bitch.’
Yeah. She was. She was a nightmare. But that doesn’t change the fact we were together for six years, that I shared twelve years of my life with her—six of them as her lover.
‘We’d been growing apart for a long time,’ I say, trying to take my share of the blame. ‘We spent so much time apart. The end was inevitable.’
‘Was it?’
It’s a sad question. One full of heartache and hurt.
‘You ended this. You ended us.’ I throw the whisky back and place the glass down a little more heavily than I should. ‘And you got engaged to Tom.’
‘That was a mistake,’ she says, and then she sobs.
And those six years spent caring about Sienna, wanting her to be happy, damned well loving her, make me forget the hurt she’s inflicted.
‘Can we go back in time and fix it, Ash?’
* * *
I feel a tiny bit like royalty as I step out of my office onto the busy twilight streets of Manhattan and see a sleek black car waiting for me. Grayson is beside it, dressed in a suit. I flick a smile at him but then I look lower instantly, towards the heavily tinted window of the car, behind which I know Ethan will be sitting.
Just like last time.
My pulse is thready and I feel sensual tension running through me like a powerful car idling at the lights. One hint of green and I will pounce.
I walk slowly, glad I made the effort to slip home at lunch and change into something fresh. I’ve gone with a black jersey dress that falls to my ankles, with sleeves which bell to my wrists. The neckline is demure, but it hugs me like a second skin.
I love this dress.
Small fact: I destroyed every piece of clothing I owned after Jeremy. Everything. Anything he had seen me in, and obviously anything he’d given me or touched me in—which was pretty much everything. I could no longer bear to associate who I was with who I’d been, and every time I put an outfit on I heard his voice. I felt his hands.
It was, perhaps, the first stage of my eight-month-exorcism—the first step in preparation for this. The final erasing of the man I once loved.
It’s silly, I suppose, but I like feeling that no other guy has touched me in this dress.
I like it that it’s all for Ethan.
That thought is running dangerously close to breaking our rules, so I fold it away and push a bright smile to my face. It doesn’t falter when Grayson opens the door.
I move into the car and Ethan is there, overpowering me with his presence, all that I need, all that I can sense, and he’s just sitting there, staring at me.
‘Hey.’
He holds a hand out and I reach for it as I step in, sitting beside me. Am I imagining it or is he frowning?
I must be imagining it, because within a minute he smiles at me, and pleasure reaches right down to the bottom of my toes.
‘How was your day?’ I ask.
He leans forward, brushing his lips to mine. ‘Better now.’
‘I have a bone to pick with you,’ I murmur.
‘Yes? What’s that?’
‘Flowers.’ I lift a finger in mock admonishment. ‘Flowers are expressly prohibited in our terms of engagement. Clause One, Part A.’
‘Ah.’ He grins as he catches my finger and brings it